About Dharma Merchant Services

Dharma Merchant Services is a San Francisco-based Merchant Services Provider (MSP) that offers credit card payment solutions with fair pricing and transparent practices. Dharma serves thousands of small businesses and nonprofits, and is a B Corp committed to sustainability and social responsibility.

Onboarding Challenge: Speeding Up a Sluggish Process

Before FormAssembly, Dharma’s onboarding process was slow and tedious — and subject to frequent errors.

Each pre-application involved an extensive phone call ranging from 30 to 45 minutes. The Dharma sales team would walk clients through filling out a paper form, which depleted 50 hours per month on average. Then the team had to wait for the clients to send in the applications. “We’d have to email the clients the forms, and they’d have to print them, fill them out, and fax the forms back to us,” said Nick Bencivenga, Chief Operating Officer.

If clients mailed the forms, that transit time would prolong the process even further and tack on a few days to the timeline. When the Dharma staff finally received the applications, they had to re-type client information into the database, which was another drain on resources. Manual data entry also meant an excess of time-consuming typos and data mistakes that needed to be hunted down and fixed.

A Quicker Turnaround and Improved Data Accuracy

Now, the onboarding process is much faster.

Each signup kicks off with an online form that takes 10 to 15 minutes from start to finish. With FormAssembly, Dharma has cut down the pre-application process time by 78% and has seen an enormous lift in data accuracy.

The instant availability of the data in Salesforce has eliminated the back-and-forth bottleneck and reduced how much time the sales team spends on the phone. Now, a quick 5-minute call is usually all that’s needed to clarify a piece of information or to correct a typo.

Customers are often delighted by how quick the signup process is, said Nick. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive since Dharma’s been able to speed up the turnaround time. Application approval takes just hours instead of days or weeks.

Plus, thanks to DocuSign integration, it’s easy for Dharma to capture secure digital signatures for all the necessary documents.

With the information that’s been passed into Salesforce through FormAssembly, the sales team can auto-fill a DocuSign template and send it out, which takes about 5 to 10 minutes. After that, everything’s on autopilot, no manual input necessary: DocuSign sends auto-reminder emails and Salesforce schedules additional emails and followup phone calls based on conditional triggers. When the applicants sign the documents, the files are automatically transferred to Salesforce, the sales team is notified, and the records are updated.

A Smarter Helpdesk

Dharma also uses FormAssembly to run a helpdesk. Customers can open support tickets that link directly to Salesforce — and the ticket immediately assigns the right person to help.

Since the FormAssembly form is smart and efficiently updates existing customer records, Dharma doesn’t need a separate support ticketing system. All the data is secure and centralized: the Dharma team can pull up a customer’s file with all the info they need without wasting time by digging into multiple sources.

Unmatched (and Cost-Effective) Salesforce Integration

One huge benefit of FormAssembly is the integration with Salesforce, said Nick. “It works perfectly with Salesforce. And it’s so easy to use, even when you’re dealing with complex forms.”

Dharma tested different solutions for their form needs and went through full 30-day trials with several services. They chose FormAssembly because the Salesforce integration beat any other tool they tried. Now, Dharma can’t imagine switching to a different vendor.

“It’s completely customizable, which is really unique,” said Nick. “You can map form fields to any specific field types in Salesforce. FormAssembly has a multilevel integration with a degree of granularity that no one else can match.”

Nick added that FormAssembly is especially remarkable for its price point. “I’d pay double for the functionality,” he said. “It’s more affordable than so many other options out there.”

Excellent and Friendly Customer Support

FormAssembly’s customer support team is unusual, said Nick. “The FormAssembly team is clearly committed to giving you the best support possible. Often vendors will take at least a few days to respond, only to give you the least amount of information possible because they’re busy trying to deal with so many questions.”

In contrast, FormAssembly Support gets back to you right away with real answers and solid examples, Nick said, no matter which support member helps you. “They’re genuinely interested in solving your problem, and they take responsibility and show respect. I love all of the team.”

Moving Forward with FormAssembly

Dharma is about to launch a new cost comparison form for clients. Because the pricing is so nebulous in the merchant services industry, it’s challenging to create cost comparisons, said Nick. “It’s fuzzy, and it takes a ton of internal time.”

With FormAssembly, Nick is creating a cost comparison calculator using JavaScript and native calculations. He’s excited about saving even more time and helping people understand their choices and choose what’s best for their organization.

Thank you, Nick and the Dharma team, for taking the time to share your case study with us! We’re proud to help serve your mission.